LA terror-case cooperator is given new term in prison

by Jennifer Peltz - Oct. 30, 2010 12:00 AMAssociated Press

NEW YORK - After helping prosecutors convict two co-conspirators in a terrorist plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, Abdel Ghani Meskini got a short sentence and a new start as a manager of a rundown Atlanta-area apartment complex.

But Meskini was sent back to prison Friday for nearly three more years after a judge found he broke release rules by having a handgun and trying to get an AK-47 assault rifle.

The story of Meskini's downfall, told at a hearing earlier this month, provided an unusual look at a turncoat terrorist who tried to rebuild his life.

Meskini, 42, thanked his lawyer but otherwise said nothing before U.S. District Judge John Keenan sentenced him to 31 months in federal prison. Defense lawyer Mark DeMarco suggested Meskini had been led astray by his surroundings in the crime-riddled complex - a job the judge had faulted federal probation officers for letting Meskini take.

"He was put in a position where the influences around him, perhaps, led him to this conduct," DeMarco said. "Which is no excuse, but had he been placed into a job with law-abiding people, perhaps this wouldn't have happened."

Meskini, an Algerian who came to the U.S. as a stowaway on a boat in 1994, made tens of thousands of dollars in bank-fraud and credit-card schemes before becoming involved in the so-called millennium plot to bomb the busy Los Angeles airport on New Year's Eve in 1999. The plot was thwarted when now-convicted co-conspirator Ahmed Ressam was caught trying to cross into Washington state from Canada in an explosives-laden vehicle in December 1999.

Meskini pleaded guilty in March 2001 to eight charges, including conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He testified against Ressam and Mokhtar Haouari, both now convicted and serving prison sentences.

Credited for his cooperation with investigators, Meskini was sentenced to six years in prison, less than half the term set out in sentencing guidelines. He was freed in 2005 under probation terms that barred him from having firearms, among other conditions.

The U.S. Probation Department accused Meskini last March of violating those terms in various ways, including the handgun and assault-rifle allegations and a claim that he was associating with criminals.

Meskini has been jailed since he was detained by immigration authorities last November. He has applied for asylum.